Paraparaumu Beach Golf Links
As golfers cast their minds over the world’s great links they undoubtedly leap to the Northern Hemisphere- they are of course the most famous. The fabled links of St Andrews and Lahinch; Carnoustie, Troon and Hoylake – the championship tests and the faraway outposts of Machrihanish and Dornoch always front of mind. Curiously, as minds wander South of the equator a North Star of the links doesn’t jump off the page, though for those well-travelled a little rumpled links on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast shines as bright as any.
Paraparaumu's rumpled curves
When Alister MacKenzie’s ship left Australian shores following a whirlwind 3-month spin, he had famously only seen a single hole completed – the wonderful one-shot fifth on Royal Melbourne’s West Course. Young member Alex Russell was left to supervise the construction of the West under the guise of head greenkeeper Mick Morcom, expertly completed in 1931. Post completion of the West, Alex Russell’s portfolio became one of great efficiency, designing just a handful of courses – most famously Royal Melbourne’s East course. For his sole offshore rendition, Russell was presented with a beautifully crumpled, sandy site on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast which became Paraparaumu Beach Golf Links.
There can be no doubting this is proper links golf
Less than a Kilometre from the sea, Paraparaumu’s bubbling undulations and windswept site are those of pure, proper linksland. Flooded with movement and a scatter of groovy landforms, its dumpy terrain is the star of the show and the catalyst for entirely lively and compelling golf. Across a relatively small property bound by real estate, two rows of dune ridges dice the property into three sections. These tight confines, combined with the sharp steepness of its sandhills presented some tricky routing predicaments, though with his ability to wrap fairways over, through and around the dunes with variety and elegance, Paraparaumu became proving grounds for Russell’s routing talents.
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​Across beautifully diverse grounds for golf, Russell connected a superb variety of par fours with a set of the game’s finest one-shot holes. Golfers are left to tackle landforms in a thrilling range of ways as holes are stamped with blindness, elevation change and a flurry of eccentric movement. Though ‘golf as it’s meant to be played’ has become a grossly overused phrase, one would be hard pressed to find a more ideal representation of golf in its most entertaining, thought-provoking and compelling form.
Flat lies are hard to come by
Modern architects often overwhelm a site with manmade hazards, but Paraparaumu is a shining example of how effective an architect’s restraint can be in delivering a varied test of golf. By carving out less than 40 bunkers, Russell allowed the gravity of Paraparaumu’s severe slopes to dominate the test. When combined with firm and fast turf, the roll of the land provides a more interesting test and compelling array of options than any manmade hazard ever could.
The two most compact examples form a pair of the game’s finest one-shot holes - the fifth and sixteenth. Though both bunkerless and of modest length at less than 150 metres, they could never be pronounced straightforward. Both feature vastly different iterations of picked up putting surfaces, the brutality of their run-offs and difficulty of recovery a stirring combination of thoughtful architecture and thrilling topography.
A look at the tabletop, bunkerless fifth
In this part of the world, Paraparaumu is entirely unique, boasting the spiritual qualities and linksy predicaments of bounding turf and rambunctious terrain typically reserved for the Northern links. Golfers find themselves mesmerized by the natural rough and tumble of the land and the constant strategic tug-o-war of Russell’s layout, the sheer variety and quantity of excellent holes making it one of the world’s finest.
Paraparaumu wouldn't look out of place dropped in Scotland
The Second
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Teeing from atop a dune, the one-shot second is wonderfully confounding. With tee and green divided by a a jumble of slopes and mounds, the golfer has a hard time gauging depth and committing to a landing area. Brilliantly though, what lies beyond the choppy terrain is entirely simple – its green stuck to the top of a flattened sandhill. Like much of the golf at Paraparaumu, Russell found a way to make the second look far more complex than it is.​
The busy one-shot second
The Third
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One of the most difficult things to do in architecture is to provide players with ample room and options, whilst delivering adequate consequence to the approach from the wrong angle. Paraparaumu’s rumpled grounds provide ample opportunity for natural consequence and by utilising a heaving diagonal ridge bisecting the third fairway, Russell carved out a line of charm down the left side, while any ball bailing out right finds itself blinded by the crest.​
The split-level fairway of the third
The Fifth
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Dornoch’s one-shotters are often lauded as links golf’s finest collection of short holes, though in the writer’s mind, Paraparaumu’s set are at least their equal. Carved atop a dune, the bunkerless fifth green is circled by a swathe of terrifying run-offs – a wonderful summation of Paraparaumu’s natural challenge. Golfers who fail to hold the putting surface will find themselves with one of the game’s most exacting recoveries.​
An elusive target awaits at the fifth
The Sixth
Russell’s mentor Alister Mackenzie famously designed a handful of the world’s finest short par fours – the eighth and ninth at Cypress Point and the tenth on the West Course at Royal Melbourne immediately spring to mind. The sixth may be Rusell’s best short effort where he found 320-yards of buried animals in the corner of the property, flooding its fairway with ideal randomness. Though its fairway is eccentric, the drama of the narrow, double-tiered green stands most likely to confound golfers as it emphasises the advantage of a straight tee ball to open up its length.
Humps and hollows pave the way to the narrow sixth green
The Eighth
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​Paraparaumu’s routing features a decent helping of doglegs bending in both directions and the eighth may be the most compelling. With its fairway riding an upper ridge and sliding to the right, the lower level of rough contests the direct line to the flag. A ball in the fairway opens up the green, while the direct line leaves a fiddly approach over a fronting bunker. A wonderful hole of ample optionality and temptation.
Golfers will be tempted by the direct line at the flag
The Eleventh
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Often recognised as Paraparaumu’s shortcoming is the opening trio on the back side which straddles the left boundary. The glaring exception arrives at the eleventh, where golfers willing to flirt with the white stakes are handsomely rewarded by the backstop of the green snuggled into a dune, while those approaching from the right find themselves wrestling with the gravity of the slope.
The bowled green of the 11th uses the property boundary wonderfully
The Thirteenth​
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One of the country’s most iconic holes as the Tararua Ranges loom in the distance, the thirteenth is as brawny as it is majestic, its 450-yards rising across tumbling terrain to a skyline green. The fairway’s slopes deliver an abundance of rub of the green golf, kicking balls every which way, while the steepness of the approach makes it the most demanding of the day. Another hazardless hole of immense interest.
The 13th - one of New Zealand's most famous
The Fifteenth
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Presenting one of links golf’s trademark marker-posts, the fifteenth tees blindly over a cluster of sandhills. The charateristically picked up surface feeds off both sides and to the front and elicits a problematic approach from anywhere off line.
There are no easy approaches into the fifteenth
The Sixteenth
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Paraparaumu rarely overwhelms with length, relying on the questions asked by its topography to test golfers, and the seventeenth stands as its spiritual model. An elevated, angled green hugs a dune to its left, with a dramatic run-off to the right offering no bailout over its 140 yards. Like all of the great short par threes of the world, it’s a hole of chaotic consequence which delivers an incredibly wide variance of outcomes.
A terrifying flick of great consequence
It would be easy for those around the world to question the value of a trip to Paraparaumu, assuming it to be a lite version of the more famous links of Great Britain – how wrong they would be. Owing to its site of ideal severity and unique landforms, combined with Russell’s adventurous routing, a loop of Paraparaumu yields linksy shots golfers won’t find anywhere else. Though its world-beating set of short holes will steal the headlines, Russell’s ability to route such a wide variety of compelling two-shotters is the heart of the layout as they move gracefully around the property.
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There is little excuse for the travelling golfer to skip Paraparaumu on a trip down-under. In a country which is quickly being absorbed by modern golfing developments, it remains as one of the purest Kiwi club experiences, an architectural education and some of the best value golf on the planet.